[KronisLV]

Weren’t they claiming their party is opposed to over regulation and critiqued EU for that or something? Funny, that.

Anyways, this seems like pretty good PR for Anthropic: “Our models are so powerful even the government forbid us from exporting access to them as a service for a while!” for once this gets sorted out (if it does). It’s one thing when they just write self-congratulatory blog posts and people are skeptical, it’s another (at least, optics wise) when the government targets them, specifically.

Ofc the original intent might have been to hurt them by removing their advantage vs OpenAI, go figure. I wonder whether OpenAI's next models would get a similar treatment, or whether the govt. would also decide that Opus 4.X and GPT-5.5 shouldn't be given to foreigners as well. Who knows if some money needs to change hands behind the scenes in the form of a charitable donation.

If this affects all LLMs long term though, things will be pretty messed up.

[juliendorra]

It’s very bad PR for all US AI companies, not just Anthropic.

[thefounder]

I don’t see it as good PR for Anthropic at all. They did a lot of PR in that direction but now it backfired.

People/gov now think twice about relying on US ai products. I don’t think the investors are very happy with the place this landed either.

I think the right move for Europe and other countries would be to effectively ban US tech and follow the Chinese response to Nvidia (delivered personally to Trump: we want to build our own AI chips).

[pjmlp]

We are back to cold war computing days, the message has long arrived on this side of the Atlantic, even if most companies and governments aren't able to get rid of old habits.

[bjelkeman-again]

It is the old crypto export ban again, bu now for LLMs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

[pjmlp]

Not only crypto, go look into the export restrictions of commercial languages.

For example, before becoming open source you naturally could not buy Visual Studio legally in countries forbidden by US exports.

Or even the PlayStation 3, when sold from US locations.

[KronisLV]

> People/gov now think twice about relying on US ai products.

Oh this has already been clear to anyone in the EU, for example. The current reliance on US tech and even widespread stuff like MS is pretty deeply rooted, however and it might take a while to do anything about it - so for many it’s a matter of convenience for now.

That said, as long as what you need sits behind an OpenAI or Anthropic API and you don’t have deeper proprietary integrations, there is no moat. I can even run Claude Code with DeepSeek if I so choose (though OpenCode is neat too).

Best EU has at the moment seems to be Mistral though, which is… sorta passable, but not cutting edge. Oh well.

> I think the right move for Europe and other countries would be to effectively ban US tech and follow the Chinese response to Nvidia (delivered personally to Trump: we want to build our own AI chips).

Not sure about outright ban, but homegrown govt. systems should have both the devs and the infra in EU.

Would also be really cool if we could make even regular CPUs and GPUs some day but I don’t think that’s super likely, though. Kinda amazing that China can do that! Even consumer stuff like the Chinese Lisuan GPUs (and Moore Threads I think), hell, even the Russian Elbrus CPUs.

[thefounder]

It has been clear but it was never enforced. Now EU and UK was placed on the same level as China.

[foo12bar]

Don't they lose money on every token they sell, though? It may be a blessing in disguise. They can now use all of their resources towards superintelligence, and can't be considered selfish/evil for not sharing their fruits. The government made me now becomes an excuse.

[BjoernKW]

> I think the right move for Europe and other countries would be to effectively ban US tech and follow the Chinese response to Nvidia (delivered personally to Trump: we want to build our own AI chips).

How would the EU replace US tech? There simply are no equivalent providers of such technology in the EU, regardless of pipe dreams in that respect EU representatives regularly conjure up (privacy industry, "European Google", "European Facebook", you name it ..,).

Maybe, however, such a move would actually be consistent with dominant EU policy. The EU seems hellbent on becoming poor and economically irrelevant, after all.

[tremon]

The primary European failure here has been to allow the hollowing out of the EU tech space. There have been plenty of web tech players in the EU; the US policy over the last 30 years has been to absorb them into US companies or buy them off using US capital, and the EU strategy has been to very much encourage that.

But it is complete fantasy to use the current landscape as evidence of capability. It would be equally shortsighted to say "How would the US replace Chinese manufacturing? There simply are no equivalent supply chains in the US, regardless of pipe dreams that pedophile sycophants regularly conjure up. The US seems hellbent on becoming poor and economically irrelevant".

[BjoernKW]

It never ceases to amaze me how people scramble to defend the EU's failed policies over the last three decades. The EU managed to regulate itself out of all relevant markets and it only has itself to blame.

[mr_toad]

The EU lost its manufacturing capacity to countries with cheaper labour, just like the US. The US has only succeeded in IT, everywhere else it struggles against Asia.

The ‘American dream’ attracted a lot of talent (look at how many tech leaders were immigrants), and once the network effects (both IT and social) kicked in it was hard to stop. This is a story that has unfolded many times throughout history. Talent moves to where talent is. And it will move if conditions change.

[weakfish]

You’re missing their point, they’re not defending EU policy and in fact agree that current capability is poor. They’re saying that it can change and that the US is also self sabotaging in other ways.

[viking123]

Way to miss the point lmao

[BjoernKW]

Care to elaborate?

[cherryteastain]

China managed it by keeping US tech out despite, initially, not having alternatives to Google et al.

In winner takes all industries you MUST be protectionist and develop domestic alternatives.

[BjoernKW]

> and develop domestic alternatives.

Therein lies the rub for the EU. They think they can just regulate such alternatives into existence, yet have time and time again failed to provide such alternatives.

[robotresearcher]

With exceptions. Linux being the most obvious example.

[BjoernKW]

Linux is no EU project, but very much global. It just happens that its originator (who, quite tellingly, has been living and working in the US since the mid-90s) is Finnish.

[adgjlsfhk1]

Cory Doctorow gave a talk a couple months ago with the answer to how. Stop honoring US copyright.

[tessellated]

I could start teaching bittorrent and adblocking in the local pub!

[Avicebron]

It's really not that bad of an idea. At least the adblocking part is justifiable considering considering how many times I see people (older/less tech savvy) getting caught with scareware from ads.

[kansface]

This would not end well.

[BjoernKW]

> Stop honoring US copyright.

I suppose some people just want to see the world burn.

I'm by no means a supporter of copyright and copyright laws, but unilaterally terminating such agreements is a recipe for disaster. How do you think the US would react to such a move?

[adgjlsfhk1]

The us got those agreements in the first place in exchange for 0% tarrifs for international trade. Now that the US has dropped free trade, there's very little incentive for other countries to hold to their side of the deal. If europe wanted to, they could really go to 25 year on US copyright with a plan to go to 0 if there was retaliation

[pjmlp]

By baby steps, nonetheless an improvement.

Foster having Linux/BSD distribution available pre-installed in stores like FNAC, Cool Blue, Media Markt and co.

Push for FOSS programming languages, OSes, products and frameworks at very least on public sector projects.

Forbid outsourcing outside European countries.

Forbidding companies to have apps only available on Android/iOS, they must cater for a diverse system of desktop and various mobile OSes.

And plenty more possibilities that could be done, yes it isn't easy, then again Rome wasn't built in a day.

Regardint relevance, last stage capitalism above everything else isn't something I wish for my country.

[BjoernKW]

It's way to late for baby steps. The EU is bound to become either a US or a Chinese protectorate in all but name in just a few years time now.

How isolationism and open source are supposed to stem that tide, is beyond me.

[pjmlp]

It is never too late for the Great Wall of Europe.

Like in each ones lives, sometimes hard decisions are only possible because they are forced upon us without alternatives.

Recent example, Ukraine would never gotten advanced drone technology, if it wasn't for the price they are being forced to pay to keep their country.

If unfortunately we're faced with similar hard decisions on who to depend on, they will have to be done, regardless of their cost to the local industry.

[BjoernKW]

While advancements in drone technology in Ukraine certainly have been accelerated by the war, the country was by no means unprepared. They have been preparing for a large-scale war ever since the Russian occupation of Crimea (and the dismal international reaction to that).

The EU isn't even capable of ramping up its own defence capabilities when being faced with the very real threat of a Russian incursion in the next few years, which has me wonder what would be required for them to finally wake up.

[ifoo]

Sure, it "backfired" but it would've happened anyway. Trump mad Trump get revenge. Trump smash. That's how he operates - and even though Anthropic were being dicks about the marketing, they got Trump mad. That's why this is happening, not due to the marketing - it would've happened anyway.

If anything the marketing is WHY it got so popular during these 3 days.

[AtNightWeCode]

On the contrary. This is more like a Kaspersky moment for American cloud services. Simply can no longer be trusted for use outside of US.

[carlossouza]

Good for Anthropic?

Can you think of any case in history where the US government suspended product sales due to national security concerns and that was ultimately beneficial for the company being regulated?

[drcongo]

https://newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/when-the-mac-was-...